Sunday, March 05, 2006

41

I tried to make this the answer to everything, but I’m still not quite there.

I haven’t written about much else than knitting lately. I haven’t even been doing much else than knitting lately. So if you miss me, you’re not the only one. I miss me too. The reasons for this are very simple: I have been knitting a lot, and not done much else worth writing about. I work and knit. That’s about it. And the stuff worth writing about has been too difficult to find words for, so I just haven’t. This is a bold attempt to find words for some fragments of everything, and after this post I will consider this blog updated and up to date (even if the words I find aren’t the ones I was looking for). Let’s hope I write something worth reading.

If I start with today, let’s just say things are hectic at work. I work a lot. I never think I do enough, and I don’t get paid enough for what I actually do. Yet. I have so much fun at work, but I’m exhausted when I get home and I get an anxiety attack every time I pay my bills. I feel it’s going to change soon, but this pace of working like a maniac for a month, then hardly work enough to pay the bills at all the next month I think could kill me if I keep it up.

Anyway, work is Fun, and so much is happening. I do lessons at the design museum, and everybody loves them and I feel I’m doing a good job. This upcoming week I do a new and different lesson on light and design, and I don’t feel prepared enough because I didn’t have neither time nor energy to do my best preparing it last week... But I’ll make it fun. I so want it to be fun, it just will be. Furthermore we’re writing an application for money so that I can start writing a book of which I was offered to be editor. We’ll see what comes out of it, but it’s an exiting idea all the same. It’s supposed to be a city history of Gothenburg combined with tutoring chapters on methods of how to build a good walk. It’s to be used by teachers as well as just being a pretty, different and fun history book. I have so many ideas for this!

(Everybody reading that know more about me than the fact that I made a Birch Shawl recently are jumping in their seats yelling: Get to the point you moron!)

I’ve desperately wanted to write about my stay in Canada, but it’s difficult. I did blog the whole trip in Swedish, but even there I mostly told it in the then-we-did-this-and-then-we-did-that-version of things. I left out the rest. This is the rest: Difficult. Which is why I haven’t written about it. It’s about love mixed with long distances, big decisions and fear, but also logic not agreeing with the matters of the heart, misunderstandings and long lost crap that floated to the surface of my consciousness. We’re either very good for each other or very bad, but it’s in the extreme forms so the two are deceivingly similar. No, I couldn’t find the words for it today either. Difficult is the best I can do.

The best memories from Canada are too private to write about, but the runners up for the trophy of best memory are actually more than one. There is no way I could decide what the best memory is, when I get to choose from amazing things like these: - Finally meeting Mandy! And Zak of course! (But in all fairness, Zak I actually had met before). Mandy dearest, you are as amazing as I knew you would be. I only wish we’d had more time just the two of us. - Banff. I had a day in Banff with Spencer I will never forget. My back hurt like hell that day, but all I remember are amazing views, hot springs and warm smiles. - The road trips. We drove to Vancouver and back from Calgary over new years and those many, many (many, many) kilometers over the Rockies were adventurous, wonderful and horrible all in one. Whenever I touched the wheel we hit a blizzard or a rainstorm. And poor Spencer pulled his back just in time for me to be stuck driving over Roger’s Pass – again – in the snow, in about 40km/hour with a visibility of approximately 10 meters in front of the car. We made it and Spencer’s back did get better. We had an adventure for sure, and we got many, very dear, memories. - Vancouver with it's Casa de Gelato (218 flavors of ice cream!), the clothing stores Mandy showed me (that skirt is the hottest thing in my closet still!), Cleveland Dam and the resevoir where Spencer took me. I really liked Vancouver.- Victoria. Seeing where Spencer grew up. Meeting his brother and his family. Seeing the scenes for all those stories I've heard...- And I’ll remember all the friends and family of Spencer’s I got to meet, Christmas dinner with the huge turkey, the good coffee at the Planet, disgusting Tom Horton’s coffee, Long View Jerky and Dentyne gum, the autocross, how I regret not buying more stuff at Gina Brown’s, baked sweet potato and then there are many fond everyday memories of just spending time with Spencer.

I wish I could teach you all Swedish instead and refer you to the Swedish blog for more on my adventures. Anyway, I’ve been back home for almost two months now, but my mind is still in Calgary a lot of the time.

The latest news are mostly work related and not that exiting, so I’ll write again whenever I have something knit, something new, something felt, something seen, something exiting or surprising to tell you.

2 comments:

I've been dying to hear about your trip, of course. Sounds like a fantastic (if confusing) time. I hope you can make it back again soon, if it's right.

"disgusting Tom Horton's coffee". . . hah! It's Tim's ;). And yeah, we drink that swill because it makes us feel more Canadian, not because it tastes good. Did you have butter tarts? Nanaimo bars? Coffee Crisp??

Hello dear Lisa. I'm sorry I've been out of touch lately. I don't envy you the task of trying to sort through the experiences of your holiday here. I, too, wish you and I had had a little more one-on-one time... I suppose that will have to wait for next time, wherever and whenever that may be. We should try to talk soon, yes? :)Love, Mandy